University of California, Berkeley, BA 1983
Harvard University, JD 1986
Office: 25 Cargill Hall
Mail: 400 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115
Tel: (617) 373-5986
Fax: (617) 373-5056
E-mail: d.williams@neu.edu
Daniel R. Williams
Professor Williams teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law and procedure and evidence. He also heads the School of Law’s Criminal Advocacy Clinic and is involved in the law school’s Legal Skills in Social Context program.
Professor Williams has been a trial and appellate lawyer for many high-profile clients and cases, from Dick Cavett to Mumia Abu Jamal to the government of Cuba. A death penalty litigation specialist, Professor Williams won the death penalty appeal in New York that resulted in the ending of capital punishment in that state. Another landmark legal victory, the case of New Jersey v. Michaels, led to widespread changes in the way child abuse investigators interview children and spawned a movement to free the wrongly convicted. Several of his cases have been featured in movies, documentaries, and news programs. He’s been awarded the Morton Stavis Memorial Justice Award and the Thurgood Marshall Award for his legal work.
A human rights activist, Professor Williams has spoken on criminal justice and human rights issues in the United States and Europe. His writings range widely, encompassing capital punishment, the war on terror, legal theory and philosophy, trial practice and evidence and constitutional criminal procedure. He is the author of Executing Justice: An Inside Account of the Case of Mumia Abu Jamal (St. Martin's Press), a text that one critic called "one of the most important books on race in America today." He continues to teach trial practice and communication skills at the Trial Lawyers College in Wyoming.
- “After the Gold Rush---Part II: Hamdi, the Jury Trial, and Our Degraded Public Sphere,” Penn State Law Review, summer 2008, forthcoming.
- After the Gold Rush---Part I: Hamdi, 9/11, and the Dark Side of the Enlightenment,” 112 Penn State Law Review 341, 2007.
- “Misplaced Angst: Another Look at Consent-search Jurisprudence,” 82 Indiana Law Journal 69, Winter 2007.
- “The Futile Debate Over the Morality of the Death Penalty: A Critical Commentary on the Steiker and Sunstein-Vermeule Debate,” 3 Lewis & Clark Law Review 625, 2006.
- “Barefoot v. Estelle: Experts and Future Dangerousness;” “Mincey v. Arizona: No Crime-scene Exception for Warrantless Searches of a Home;” “Michigan v. Mosley, The Suspect’s Power to Control the Flow of Interrogation;” “Capital Punishment and Resentencing;” “Rights of the Accused,” Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties. Finkelman, ed. Routledge Press, 2006.
- “Mitigation and the Capital Defendant Who Wants to Die: A Study in the Rhetoric of Autonomy and the Hidden Discourse of Collective Responsibility,” 57 Hastings Law Journal 725, 2005-2006.
- “Roper v. Simmons and the Limits of the Adjudicatory Process,” Michigan State Law Review 1113, 2005.
- “The Supreme Court;” “Procedural Justice,” Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment. Levinson, ed. Sage Publication, 2002.
- Executing Justice: An Inside Account of the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
- “The Ordeal of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” States of Confinement. James, ed. St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
